News June 2013

Paper trail

Recent results point to Abraham Liebes of Rawitsch as the son of Wollf Liebes of Kempen. Moritz Liebes of Ostrowo (EH's gg gfather) was probably also Wollf's son. 

Family Finder

Within the Liebes Group

We now have 7 Family Finder results and these are summarized below. They are very encouraging. With 7 members there are 21 possible matches (6*7/2) and we have 11! This is the level expected for 4th cousins, although we know our relationships are a little further off to say the least. So the Family Finder seems able to detect more distant relationships than claimed by FTDNA.

Total shared DNA (centiMorgans)

Calculated relationship

(A relationship is suggested only if it is 4th cousin or closer) 

It doesn't look like just chance. We have systematically been getting about 50% matches among the group from the start. So probably this means the Kepno community was strongly intermarried, so most of our matches seem more recent than they really are. It would be interesting to expand the group to anyone who can trace their ancestry to Kepno, or to create a new group.

How do we explain the differences in the number of matches among Family Finder members? At the moment the group is too small to interpret this properly. Probably this is mainly a result of statistical variability. Children inherit half their DNA from each parent, but which half differs among siblings, and grandchildren do not inherit exactly a quarter of their DNA from each grandparent. So after a few generations, the amount of DNA two distant cousins have inherited from their common ancestor may differ widely. So some relationships go undetected, and others look closer than they really are.

Outside the Liebes group

All those of us who have taken the Family Finder have many matches, ranging from "only" about 200 for YO to over 1000 for LJB. The main factor governing the number of matches is percentage of Jewish ancestry, simply because the vast majority of Family Finder testers are of Jewish ancestry. Comparing members' lists of matches, we find 4 matches shared by all group members. The Group Administrator's next task will be to get in touch with all these matches, find out what they know of their own ancestry, and see where they might fit in. 

It is interesting to note that among those matches who have posted their ancestry, the overwhelming majority stem from further east: Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Russia... Again, this might reflect the population of Family Finder testers, or it might tell us something about migrations of Jewish populations, from East to West as Prussian provinces gradually granted rights to Jewish settlers. Comments from historians welcome!

News May 2012

All results from the kits ordered during the December special offer have now appeared. Results are very interesting.

Family Finder

We now have 3 more Family Finder results, from EH, a great granddaughter of Josef Wolf Liebes of Ostrowo, who I suspect was a grandson of Wollf Liebes of Kempen, one from YO, a ggg granddaughter of Chaim Liebes of Kempen, and one from R N (father of DP), a descendant of William Liebes, son of Abraham Liebes of Rawitsch. We already had results for LB, a gg grandson of Salomon Liebes of Kempen and for NH, a gg gdaughter of Jacob Liebes of Kempen (your Group Administrator).

The results are:

YO is LB's second best match and LB is YO's best. Their suggested relationship is 3rd cousin.

NH is LB's 15th best match and LB is NH's second best. Their suggested relationship is 3rd cousin. 

NH matches EH at the 5th - distant cousin level. NH and EH are about half way down each others' lists.

RN matches NH as 4th cousin and EH as 3rd cousin.

No match is detected between NH and YO, EH and YO, EH and LB, RN and YO, or RN and LB. 

We know that if the fiveof us are related through Liebes, the relationship is at least 4th cousin once removed between YO and LB, and more distant for the other pairs. FTDNA claims only 10% of 5th cousins are detected so we are pretty lucky to have 5 matches out of 10 possibilities. This might be just luck, or it might mean some of us are multiply related, or perhaps that FTDNA's estimates are on the conservative side. 

All in all, these results can be taken as confirmation that all the Posen Province Liebes families are related.

Four of us have hundreds of matches (LB and EH have nearly a thousand). I shall look at everyone's list of matches shortly and compare them to look for matches in common and get back to you with results. I have noticed that most matches have their origins rather further east than Posen province (e.g. Lithuania and Ukraine). This might mean our common ancestors migrated to Kempen from the East, or that most customers of FTDNA are descendants of Ukrainian and Baltic Jews.

Y-DNA

The previous results had already confirmed that SL and FL (Rawitsch branch) and JL of the English Lebus family (descendants of Solomon Liebes of Kempen) are related. ML (a descendant of Jacob Liebes of Kempen) tested recently and he matches all three.

We also have a result from DL, a descendant of Frederick August Liebes of the Alsace-Lorraine (French) connection. And the result is that DL belongs to a completely different haplogroup from FL, JL or SL, or in simpler terms, DL's patrilinear line is distinct from FL, JL, ML and SL.

A positive result is relatively easy to interpret: it means there is a link. There are several interpretations of a negative result. The most obvious is that the two lines are unrelated. There are other possibilities: someone was adopted, or took his mother's name, or his mother remarried and the child took his stepfather's name.

What next?

To check whether DL's not matching means the Alsace Lorraine Liebes family is not connected with the Posen Province family, we need another Y-DNA sample from Alsace-Lorraine. I shall get in touch with them. We also need to check how DL's grandfather Frederick August connects with the other Alsace families.

We still need a Y-DNA contributor from the Lemberg (Lvov, Lvyyv) branch, also from the branch now living in Western Germany, to see whether they connect to the Alsace or Posen province branch. 

November 2011

Good news! The Rawitsch and Kempen branches are related!

Detailed comments are found on the "results" page. In brief, we now have results from Sid, plus earlier results from Fred and John. and these results confirm that Fred and Sid are more closely related with one another than with John. This is very good news. It tells us that these results confirm what was suspected from a combination of family lore and indirect evidence, and hence that these "unofficial" sources can be relied upon if some confirmation can be found from another equally unofficial source.

Next steps:

- confirm relationship with EH (Ostrowo branch), DP (Rawitsch branch) and YO (Chaim of Kempen descendant). These three require a Family Finder test.

- confirm relationship with Lorraine branch (descendant of Frederick August from Metz) and Jacob of Kempen branch. These two require a Y-DNA 37 marker test.

24 September 2011

Results below; what next?

Y-DNA and Family Finder results are encouraging, and are briefly commented below. Where do we go from here?

GedCom

We need to remember that DNA takes over where the paper trail peters out, so it would be a good idea for group members to post the GedCom of their ancestry. Details can be omitted for living people, but otherwise any known birth and death dates and places should be included. If you need help with this get in touch:Nicole.Heymans@skynet.be.

Next batch of tests

We saw this summer that the special offer afforded a $30 reduction on the group rate for Y-DNA tests ($119 instead of $149) whereas the reduction on the Family Finder was $90 ($199 instead of $289), so I suggest using group funds for Y-DNA tests at present, and hoping for another “Summer Special” next year, when we shall hopefully be able to carry out a few Family Finder tests.
At present several potential Y-DNA candidates are known, belonging to the Alsace-Lorraine, Herman of Rawitsch and Jacob of Kempen branches. One of each will be enough, and I believe they all live in the USA (shipping costs $4), so the total cost for the next batch will be 3*(149 + 4)=$459. The balance of the general fund is $52, so any contributions welcome!

There are living descendants of Chaim/Joachim Liebes of Kempen (Yvonne), and of William Liebes of Rawitsch (Donna), but they are mixed line, so the only possible test is Family Finder. I suggest getting ready now for the next special offer (i.e. spending some time now on looking for the optimal candidate). Projected cost for both: $408, so total projected costfor coming year: $867.

There are also a few outliers, who are not yet connected to a specific branch. Hopefully we shall be able to test these later.

Y-DNA results

(Y-DNA is passed from father to son with an occasional mutation. Mutations function as a rather irregular clock and are a great help in detecting relatedness.)

We now have the Y-DNA results for John Lebus and Fred Liebes, and the good news is that they match with a genetic distance of 1 at the12 and 25 marker levels. The predicted number of generations to most recent common ancestor (MRCA) is 7 at a probability of 52%. The mismatch at the 12 marker level came as a surprise: with only this result the MRCA between John and Fred would have been 17 generations back (at a 51% probability). Their haplogroup (distant ancestral origin, 25000 years ago) is J2; haplogroup J (Levant) originated in the Middle East and split into two major branches, J1 and J2. It is a frequent haplogroup among Semitic populations. But this kind of information doesn't really tell us anything of genealogical interest: John and Fred probably share a few thousand (or tens of thousands) other ancestors 25000 years ago, whose YDNA has not been passed down.

John and Fred both have very many matches, all with unknown names. There is probably a lot of hidden information here but very few testers have posted any genealogy data so it's not easy to see where the link can be. Most of them are probably very very distant relatives that appear simply through a statistical effect.

Leslie does not match John and Fred at all. This was expected. His haplogroup is E1b1b1 (Mediterranean) which originated in East Africa or the Middle East, and spread among North and East African populations and west across the Mediterranean.

The good news, in view of these results, is that the 37 marker test is more than sufficient for detecting relatedness at the level we are interested in. However I would not recommend limiting future tests to the 25 marker level: there will probably be some perfect matches at this level, and the ideal (best value for money) level is the first one where there is a mismatch.

Family Finder results

The Family Finder tests autosomal DNA (22 chromosomes, excluding X and Y chromosomes). The good news is that this test tells us about all branches, whether male, female or mixed. The bad news is that this test can only tell us about relatively recent generations. 

We have a contribution from Leslie, whose grandmother was Rachel Lebus of the English branch (Rachel's ancestor was Salomon Liebes of Kempen.) Among other tests, Leslie took the Family Finder which I also took, and the exciting result is that Leslie is my best match so far. FTDNA says we are probably 3^rd cousins, but the records say we are at best 5^th or 6^th cousins (7th or 8^th generation common ancestor).

This means that FTDNA's Family Finder can probably confirm suspected relationships going several generations further back than they claim. This is encouraging for those who have no potential Y-DNA or mt-DNA tester among their known relatives.

22 July 2011

Exciting news!

As Group Administrator I am still new to the job. I was rather taken aback by the unexpected summer offer for new group members, valid for less than a week and announced on the first day of the offer, in the middle of the summer holiday. Thanks to the generosity of a few group members, and a prompt response from a couple of prospective DNA contributors, advantage was taken of this special offer for two Y-DNA 37 tests. One is from the Kempen/Kepno branch, the other presumably from the Rawitsch/Rawicz branch.

As soon as results come in, they will be posted here, with interpretations and comments.